AI Is Taking Notes for Doctors. UI Health Is All In

UI Health is rolling out an AI documentation system across its inpatient, outpatient, and emergency-care settings. The academic health enterprise of the University of Illinois Chicago treats a multilingual patient population of about 1.4 million people each year. The system selected Abridge, a Pittsburgh-based company that builds automated clinical documentation tools designed to convert clinician-patient conversations into structured medical notes.

UI Health said it prioritized tools that improve the experience of both clinicians and patients. “We prioritize technology that enables the best experience for both our workforce delivering care and the patients receiving it,” said Dr. David Chestek, Chief Medical Information Officer at UI Health.

The decision followed a pilot in which a key patient-experience measure improved. Survey responses to “provider explained in a way you understand” increased from 91 to 97 percent during the test period. The health system has presented the deployment as part of an effort to reduce documentation burden and improve clarity in clinical encounters.

Abridge’s system integrates directly into Epic, UI Health’s electronic health-record platform, allowing clinicians and trainees to generate AI-assisted documentation without leaving their existing workflow. Abridge positions its platform as enterprise-grade and says it supports more than 28 languages and more than 50 medical specialties. These capability claims come from the company’s own materials.